Embracing Collaboration and Social Perspective Taking Using Interactive Tabletops

Abstract

In a contemporary multicultural classroom in which students from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds learn together, it becomes necessary to embrace collaboration, social perspective-taking, and understanding of the other to help students comprehend classmates’ values and perspectives. Based on the already researched affordances of interactive tabletops in education, as well as promising empirical results from their limited application in multicultural settings, the authors present a case of practical and impactful technology research in a culturally diverse classroom. The study was conducted with 44 students as part of their formal, socio-emotional education course in a public school in Cyprus. The study presents evidence of perceived collaborative learning around the tabletop, as well as gains in social perspective-taking propensity from pre- to post-test, demonstrating a promising use of interactive tabletops and related technologies in the field of education.